Rhiannon Giddens Quotes

That was the special thing about the Carolina Chocolate Drops. We didn't want to do music full-time. We weren't looking to get rich, which is good, because we didn't. But we went further than we thought we would go. We started that band to celebrate Joe Thompson and the black string band music. That's not really a recipe for commercial success.

Real folk music long ago went to Nashville and left no known survivors.

From the first time I played with Lester Flatt, I sensed an extreme amount of history around me.

I'll talk about the banjo all day long and the history of minstrel shows.

It seems like bluegrass people have more great stories to tell than other musicians.

Bluegrass has a very, very strict musical form. Once you start to dilute it, it disappears.

I went to school for folk music back when I was a teenager and learned hundreds of songs.

I'd like to be remembered as a keeper of the flame who kept traditional music alive, because I've been doing that twice as long as I was in the Byrds.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I'm doin' now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

My son, Walker, has a band called The Dust Busters. You know, he plays banjo, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin, so a lot of my interest in that kind of music comes from him constantly listening to this stuff. He's taught me the history of it. It's remarkable how these young kids are now turned on to more traditional old-time music.

I know there's some kind of history to mountain music-like it came from Ireland or England or Scotland and we kept up the tradition.

I'm an old fan of the Negro spirituals.

Bluegrass is wonderful music. I'm glad I originated it.

I grew up with a heavy diet of gospel, folk, and blues because those are kind of the cornerstones of traditional American music.

We have to let the younger generations take our music - and approach it the way they want - but just teach them where it all comes from.

I had this dream like years ago. I had this dream - I wanted to be in an all-black string band.

I moved back to Tennessee in '86 or '87. That's when I worked with the Carter Family because I really wanted to understand my roots.

Doing the classics is always nice because it's a part of the archive, and that's what people love to hear, and I don't mind that.

I've grown up on Bob Dylan and all that, but there was a certain standard set up by people before 1955.

'In the Pines' is a very old song dating back to slavery. Lead Belly made it popular.

Well, you know, the original banjos were all handmade instruments. Gourd - it would be made with gourds and whatever, you know, materials would have been around. And, you know, first hundred years of its existence, the banjo's known as a plantation instrument, as a black instrument, you know?

When I was a child, there was an old man who toured the villages with just a guitar. The first time I heard him singing Skip James songs, I thought he was singing in an African language.

I traveled to a library in South Africa called ILAM (International Library of African Music), which has a collection of about 500 different instruments that don't really exist anymore.

We were copying lots of bands, like Avett Brothers and Old Crow Medicine Show.

I believe that you should not be just raised on what the music is right then. You should be raised on what is from your past, what your parents have grown up with, because it's a really big piece of your culture that you need to know about, and I'm glad my mother has done that for me.